Pages

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

JDRF Walk 2011

Our JDRF Walk was this past Sunday. We participate in the JDRF Philadelphia Walk, which takes place at the Art Museum circle in Philly. It is a grand place to hold a walk. Everyone dutifully runs up the steps, aka Rocky. There are masses of people. The actual walk takes place on the drive around Boathouse Row and the Schuylkill River (we say 'Skoolkil')

We are Gracie's Gang for our walk. It's just our little ole family who does it, but it makes us feel united. It makes us feel we are in this together. It makes Grace feels so supported, from the people who matter the most.

Most walks are hundreds of people. Some are thousands. Our walk this year had more than 10,000 people walking in support of Type 1 diabetes. There were hundreds of teams. The largest team, The Cohn Sisters, alone, raised more than $1.75 million over the past 4 years. The Walk raised $2 million this year.

Here's a short news segment video of the Walk. Yes, we are in the crowd and we waved at the camera. We are in the light blue shirts, right side of the screen, in the large crowd video. Don't be disappointed you can't see us, we appear for like 6 seconds.

The greatest part of the walk this year was seeing Haley speak. Haley of the great blog Naturally Sweett. She spoke so clearly, and so much from the heart, about diabetes. And she mentioned the DOC!!! I cheered. You can find what she said and see the video of her saying it, here on her blog. I am so very, very proud of her. She brought tears to my eyes.

And Grace and I finally got to meet Haley in real life! (She's beautiful, by the way!)

Haley and Grace

Other people on our 'team', so to speak, showed up too.

Our first CDE at our endo's practice!

Our endo, the fabulous Dr. B. showed up too!!!

Our OmniPod rep!

The one thing I want to tell all of you is how utterly breathtaking it is to walk with so many people, focused on one thing, all at once. The crowd is massive. You can hardly take three steps, then you take four, then you start to walk, with everyone else, side by side. And people are laughing, and talking. And there are t-shirts and banners and kids in strollers, and pumps and tubing and backpack and mommies and daddies, all walking. For the same thing.

what a great way to sum up the walk! It's actually really hard to type out the energy and just the excitement being around 10,000 people who all understand exactly how it feels to be diabetic or take take of a diabetic. thank you very much for what you said about the speech and i am so incredibly happy I got to meet you and Grace! We need to get together again!

how you climb up the mountain is just as important as how you get down the mountain. and, so it is with life, which for many of us becomes one big gigantic test followed by one big gigantic lesson. in the end, it all comes down to one word. grace. it’s how you accept winning and losing, good luck and bad luck, the darkness and the light.